


Go On And Say It

by bazinga01



Category: The Bold Type
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 21:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12350913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazinga01/pseuds/bazinga01
Summary: first "I love you" in two parts





	1. part i: adena

_(part i: adena)_

_—_

Sometimes, Kat looks at her with such affection and intensity that all Adena can do is hold her gaze. It’s become like a silent dare.

_I dare you to say it. I promise I won’t let you fall._

Adena refuses to deflect, to diffuse the intensity of those moments by talking or moving away or breaking eye contact. But Kat always does, eventually. She’ll clear her throat or blink away or start a new conversation.

For a while, Adena doesn’t say it first because she doesn’t want to pressure Kat, doesn’t want to scare her off with intimate admissions she’s not ready for.

But now? Now it’s come to feel like a charade, this silence, this pretending.

In her head, she’s told Kat that she loves her a hundred times. And she’s starting to think that maybe, just maybe, she’s making things worse rather than better by trying not to be the first person who says it out loud. And then, she makes a decision.

It’s another one of those moments, when Kat is giving her that look. That look that is so disarming in its intensity and vulnerability that it makes her breath catch. Kat is wearing a simple white t-shirt and sharing a pillow with her on the bed, playing with Adena’s fingers while their legs tangle together under the covers.

Kat breaks the eye contact first, trains her focus on the touch of their fingers instead, traces the palm of Adena’s hand with her index finger.

“ _Kat.”_

Her voice is low and warm and her girlfriend glances back up at her. Adena reaches her other hand out, strokes the side of Kat’s face and plays with the stray curls of hair there.

“Hm?”

She takes a slow even breath, reads all the emotions flickering behind Kat’s eyes before speaking, softly.

“I love you.”

Kat’s eyes widen and her breath stutters, mouth open and searching for words. She looks happy but she also looks panicked and Adena smiles, puts her finger to Kat’s parted lips.

“Shh, you don’t need to say anything right now,” she murmurs, delicately touches her bottom lip with the pad of her finger before dropping her hand. “I’m telling you because I want you to know, not because I need anything from you.” She reaches up to run her fingers through Kat’s hair, soothing. “I was so tired of not telling you,” she smiles, and Kat’s lips quirk in a small smile too.

It’s one of those rare moments where Kat looks truly shy, staring back at her, and Adena’s heart constricts, overcome with love and a fierce sort of protectiveness.

“If I’m being honest, I have loved you for a long while now,” she tells her, and Kat searches her face with quiet awe. “And, I don’t need you to be ready to say it,” she whispers, feels Kat lean into her touch. “I am telling you without expectation. Okay?”

Kat nods, struggling to find the right words, but Adena hears them anyway.

Because then Kat is surging forward, capturing her lips in a desperate kiss that pulls at her heartstrings, consuming her. Her ribs expand in her chest, trying to hold everything about the weight of this moment, and Adena kisses her back. She kisses and she kisses and she keeps kissing. Because she understands the kiss for what it is—

In the wet frantic glide of their lips, in the way that Kat’s body presses into hers, clutching at her, are the words Kat isn’t ready to say yet.


	2. part ii: kat

_(part ii: kat)_

_—_

Adena has said “I love you” to her four times now. Five, if she counts the fact that Adena technically said it twice the first time it happened.

(She definitely counts that. Adena has told her she loves her  _five times_.)

Each time it happens, it stuns her to silence, makes her stomach flutter and her heart beat faster. Adena says it with such openness and calm, as if admitting it is as easy as breathing. As if those words aren’t achingly, terrifyingly vulnerable and  _special_.

Last night, Adena gripped at her back when she came, whimpered into her mouth in-between languid open kisses. Then her body relaxed into the sheets and Kat held her, pressed soft kisses into her neck while Adena nuzzled her, stroked her hair. She’d said it then, for the fifth time.

And Kat had nearly said it back. Because her face was hidden in Adena’s neck. Because she was warm and sated and Adena was holding her and it was like nothing existed outside of her bedroom.

But she didn’t say it. Because when Adena hears it for the first time, she wants it to be because she was brave enough to say it on her own.

Instead she hums, voice low and sexy when she teases, “that good, huh?”

Adena lets her deflect, and Kat’s heart sinks, guilty.

She loves Adena, absolutely adores her. She’s just scared.

Because saying it out loud makes it real, puts her heart in someone else’s hands. There’s no going back from that.

But Adena is so good to her, is somehow able to hold the most vulnerable parts of her and keep them safe. And when she thinks about that,  _really_  thinks about it while she sips her morning coffee and stares at her office computer screen, she knows that she’s ready, even if she’s still nervous.

Unfortunately she still has a full work day to get through, and she groans, spins around in her chair.

Adena agrees to come over to her place for dinner that night. So after work, Kat gets home and she’s ordered take out for them and she has this whole plan.

She has this whole plan until Adena is in her apartment, smiling at her in the entryway with such open affection and asking about her day. And then Kat’s hands are resting on Adena’s hips, ignoring her question and—

“I love you so much.”

Adena blinks in surprise and Kat kisses her before she can say anything back, presses Adena’s body against the front door of her apartment. Adena smiles into the kiss, drops her purse to the ground and wraps her arm around Kat’s back, pulling her closer.

Eventually Adena nudges her a step back, pressing one last kiss to her lips, and she’s laughing quietly, eyes full of adoration when she reaches up to hold Kat’s face.

“I love you too.”

Later that night, once the lights are off and Kat is spooning her, she whispers into her neck, in the darkness.

“I meant it, you know.”

“Hm?” her girlfriend hums, sleepy.

“I love you, Adena.”

Her words are quiet, fragile, and she holds Adena’s body tighter, ducks her head against the back of her neck.

Adena kisses her hand and then she shifts, turns around in Kat’s hold so that she’s facing her. Adena reaches up to touch her face, lit only by the faint glow of the streetlight outside, and Kat wonders if Adena can see how breakable she feels.

It’s like she’s made of glass, any second she could shatter, and she searches Adena’s eyes in the dim light.

“I never doubted that you meant it,” Adena murmurs, presses their foreheads together, and Kat closes her eyes. “ _Dooset daram.”_   

She doesn’t have to ask what it means. She knows, hears it in every syllable, in the way the words wrap around her heart, settling there.

But still Adena whispers again, to make sure that she knows without doubt—

“I love you too, Kat.”


End file.
